Chicago says yes to Daley's third term

Daley won on the strength of a booming local economy, a highly publicized school reform program and sweeping efforts to give the city a facelift.

Rush, a four-term congressman, trailed badly in fund raising throughout the race, which showed that Daley, like his father before him, has Chicago all sewn up.

In early returns, Daley had 3,194 votes, or 94 percent, and Rush had 216 votes, or 6 percent. Daley needed at least 50 percent to avoid a runoff with his fellow Democrat.

Daley was backed by some of the city's most powerful black politicians, despite Rush's claims that the mayor was mainly concerned with beautifying downtown with flower pots and a Ferris wheel while neglecting poorer neighborhoods.

Daley, first elected in 1989, is the son of Richard J. Daley, who served as mayor of Chicago for 21 years and was boss of the now-gone Chicago Machine.

The 56-year-old mayor has drawn national attention for his drive to upgrade Chicago's schools, once described as the nation's worst.

Rush, 52, represents a mostly black, South Side district. He was a Black Panther leader in the 1960s but joined the mainstream and was a Chicago alderman before going to Capitol Hill.

While Daley pointed to his education campaign as a major achievement, declaring schools "the heart and soul of Chicago," Rush said it was a flop, noting that the dropout rate is still 50 percent.

He described Daley's popular schools chief, Paul Vallas, as "the P.T. Barnum of public education" and promised to bolster grass-roots councils that were set up to decentralize authority in the school system prior to Daley's reform drive.

Daley buried the professorial-looking Rush in the fundraising contest and blanketed TV with slick ads saying the city has changed for the better in the decade that he has ruled City Hall.

As Rush cast his ballot Tuesday, he said he was pleased that issues, not race, had dominated his campaign.

Elsewhere on the ballot in the nation's third-largest city, Treasurer Miriam Santos was running despite a federal indictment accusing her of scheming to extort campaign donations from city contractors.

At the other end of Illinois, in perennially troubled and poor East St. Louis, former Mayor Carl Officer tried to return to the office he lost eight years ago, after mountains of trash formed along the streets and workers went unpaid.

Officer said he has since reformed his flashy bachelor ways and become an ordained minister. But he faced long odds against Eddie Jackson, a school principal.

And in Georgia, Johnny Isakson, a moderate Republican known for consensus-building, was winning a special election for the House seat vacated by the more ardently partisan Newt Gingrich.